Crystallization Kinetics and Mechanism of CaO–Al2O3-Based Mold Flux for Casting High-Aluminum TRIP Steels

Abstract

Non-isothermal crystallization of the newly developed lime-alumina-based mold fluxes was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry. The crystallization kinetic parameters were determined by Ozawa equation, the combined Avrami–Ozawa equation, and the differential iso-conversional method of Friedman. It was found that Ozawa method failed to describe the non-isothermal crystallization behavior of the mold fluxes. The Avrami exponent determined by the combined Avrami–Ozawa equation indicates that the crystallization of cuspidine occurs through bulk nucleation and reaction-controlled three-dimensional growth, and then transforms to reaction-controlled two-dimensional growth at the crystallization later stage in lime-alumina-based mold fluxes with higher B2O3 content. For the mold fluxes with lower B2O3 content (10.8 mass pct), the crystallization of cuspidine is bulk nucleation and reaction-controlled two-dimensional growth at the crystallization primary stage followed by a diffusion-controlled two-dimensional growth process. The crystallization of CaF2 in mold flux originates from bulk nucleation and diffusion-controlled three-dimensional growth, which then transforms to two-dimensional growth. FE-SEM observations support these kinetic analysis results. The effective activation energy for cuspidine crystallization in the mold flux with higher B2O3 and Na2O contents increases as the crystallization progresses, and then decreases at the relative degree of crystallinity greater than 60 pct. The transition point of this trend approximately corresponds to the relative degree of crystallinity at which the crystallization mode of cuspidine transforms. For the mold fluxes with lower B2O3 and Na2O contents, the effective activation energy for cuspidine formation varies monotonically with the increase in the relative degree of crystallinity.